"I've previously argued that it will be years before we share the roads with fully autonomous, Level 5 self-driving cars," said Jim Adler, managing director of Toyota AI Ventures. "That said, there are specific use cases and environments where autonomous vehicles could hit the roads now. Self-driving delivery is another example of just such a use case.

It's Toyota AI Ventures' first investment in the space, signaling a new phase in the investment cycle for companies developing last-mile delivery robots.

Boxbot, founded by Tesla and Uber alums in 2016, is one of a spate of companies developing small unmanned vehicles for last-mile delivery. Just last week, I wrote about Robby, the Bay Area robot currently delivering for Doordash, Instacart, and Postmates in select California testbeds.